The organization, which includes the likes of NASA veteran Gary Griffin (who had been the Apollo program’s flight director), aims to send people to the moon so the can accomplish the following:

By dramatically lowering costs—to levels that rival robotic science mission budgets—we’re going to open the Moon to expeditions by space and science agencies, corporations, and individuals from around the world.

Golden Spike has stated that their main target is individuals/nations looking to use the moon for exploration and scientific purposes, hence the high costs, though they will appeal to consumers who just want to do what Sinatra couldn’t.

Golden Spike has also stated that they’ll be mostly using previously developed technology, though they didn’t specify who they will turn to to obtain said equipment.

To put it simply, America’s space program did NOT have a good start. If you were an astronaut back then, you’d probably be changing your underpants every hour with the pants crapping horror that you could easily die on a rocket, especially considering the fact that the first rockets to put men into space were repurposed intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

This video has such reasons why being an astronaut was quite possibly the most terrifying job on earth, including some clips where the rockets actually did what they’re supposed to do.

For today’s Space Snap, we’ve got Curiosity taking a selfie of itself. Apparently, it’s so self aware that it can understands what MySpace is and what a profile picture typically consists of. It’s a shame that it doesn’t realize nobody uses it anymore.

And as for the fact the camera seems to be floating above the ground on its own (unless some sort of living being is holding the camera), don’t freak out. This is typical for pictures from space as it’s a composite photo, or rather a group of pictures mashed together into one. This is how we’ve got awesome Panoramic photos of Mars from earlier rovers, and even some in outer space.

Want to see a full sized version of this? Just click the image to enlarge. Be warned though, it is extremely large and shouldn’t be attempted on Netbooks and Mobile devices. May God have mercy on your soul if you do attempt to open it.

Breaking news from England today. Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge are indeed expecting a child.

In other mildly interesting news today, NASA has finally announced their findings from their Curiosity rover on Mars from its SAM tool, which was covered here earlier.

The press release (which you can read here) is full of a lot of information about Curiosity’s first dirt sample in the image above, but it gets juicy towards the end of the press release. Quote:

SAM tentatively identified the oxygen and chlorine compound perchlorate. This is a reactive chemical previously found in arctic Martian soil by NASA’s Phoenix Lander [An earlier probe sent to Mars]. Reactions with other chemicals heated in SAM formed chlorinated methane compounds — one-carbon organics that were detected by the instrument. The chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the carbon may be of Earth origin, carried by Curiosity and detected by SAM’s high sensitivity design.

“We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift,” said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The synergies of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the mission’s main science destination on Mount Sharp.“

If you didn’t pick anything up from that, to say the very least, NASA has found organic material on the surface similar to what an earlier probe that was sent to Mars. Don’t start fortifying your house from Aliens though, because NASA still isn’t sure if the material came from Earth or truly is native to Mars, not to mention that organic material does not always equate to life.

Essentially, it’s the same message being echoed by NASA in our last post about this discovery. They think they might have something, but they’re not too sure. As such, expect NASA to conduct more experiments on their mission to verify this.

NASA has just announced in a press conference that it’s Messenger probe orbiting around the planet Mercury has discovered evidence of ice water on the planet.

Though it was suggested that there could be ice or the planet for quite some time, this comes as as surprise to many as Mercury is the closest planet to Mars and easily one of the hottest planets in our solar system, easily measuring hundreds of degrees over freezing temperature.

Because the tilt of Mercury’s axis is so marginal, some parts at the poles are never exposed to sunlight.

What makes this more interesting is that RT also added that ORGANIC material was found on the planet as well, giving signs that life may have existed elsewhere.

But UCLA planetary scientist David Page warned the Russian news agency that this does not indicate that we could find Covenant, Prometheans, Daleks or Wookies on Mercury,

“[It] doesn’t mean we have life on Mercury, but it is relevant for the question of life in the solar system in general.”

Scientists instead hypothesize that the material and water may have been from comets or some other body that made contact with the planet.